We Drive and Race the First All-New 69 Camaro

So far our special section has covered the history, the parts, and the construction details of HOT ROD 1, the first all-new '69 Camaro built since 1969. Sometimes magazine project cars get finished and have all the snazzy photographs taken, and that's it-no performance numbers, no legitimate driving impressions, nothing on the problems that always come up when you build a car from scratch . . . nothing. We planned to be thorough this time, to put this car through the full paces, both over the road and on the dragstrip, but we only met the first goal. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The HOT ROD staff first saw the finished car at the '04 SEMA Show. As we were pushing Freiburger's Bonneville Camaro into the ballroom for the Primedia party that kicked off the show, we heard a rumble from the parking lot. Then the unmistakable green and white schnoz of HOT ROD 1 made its way up the loading ramp. "Wow, he got it done," said Freiburger, referring to Jim Barber and the mad thrash we all knew had been happening in the weeks prior to the show. Barber pulled up to the ballroom and we poured over the car, checking out the details with "I can't believe you finished it" incredulousness.

"I haven't slept in a week. I knew it had to be here, so we got it done," Barber uttered in a voice obviously strained from too many days and nights yelling at guys to keep working. After the SEMA show we didn't see it again until Power Tour(tm) the following May. Over the winter, Barber and the CARS crew sorted out all the little problem areas and final fit-and-finish details, and the car was delivered via trailer to the Power Tour(tm) kickoff at Miller Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We promptly had Barber fire it up and drive down the road, where photographer Wes Allison had him roast the tires into smokey oblivion for this month's cover shot. That burned up clutch number one, though not so bad that it prevented the Camaro from completing the Long Haul(tm) with nary a problem.

"The car drove flawlessly," Barber says. "It drives nice, everything works, and I was really surprised that it actually got decent gas mileage. We were driving it well over 80 a lot of the time, and it averaged 14.5 mpg." Not bad for a 454. Thank you, EFI. Only a few nights at the hotel did the car see the trailer. The rest of the time it was on the road with the whole Power Tour(tm) crowd, chugging right along even through the torrential downpours in the southern states, and it made the trip without a hiccup.

The next time we saw the car was in early August, when we stopped by the CARS shop for a testdrive. Having owned a few daily driver early Camaros, one of them a '68 convertible, we've always wondered what the cars were like when new. By the time we had gotten ours, they already rattled in the dash, the brakes sucked, and they just felt like well-used old cars. HOT ROD 1 is brand-new though, so we hoped it would be a good representation of what it was like to drive off the dealer's lot in 1969. It's probably pretty close. We've never been in a Camaro that was so tight and solid-feeling, especially for a convertible, and everything works as it should. The power steering is light, as is the clutch pedal. The Stainless Steel brakes require a good stomp since they're not power-assisted, but they stop the car hard when you really lean on them. And the Detroit Speed stuff makes it feel like a Corvette when you crank the Budnik wheel.

We were having too much fun to listen to the stereo, so we don't know how good it sounds with the trunk-mounted 6x9s and Bazooka tube; the Flowmasters sound too good to crank up the jams anyway.

But the car didn't feel all that fast, certainly not 510hp fast, so our testdrive ended at nearby Farmington Motorsports Park (www.farmingtonmotorsportspark.com) to give it hell on the eighth-mile dragstrip. That's where we discovered a few problems.

With 500 lb-ft supposedly under our right foot, a clutch pedal under our left, and stiff-handling sidewall tires out back, we fully expected a rocket ride. But after several different launches with no tire spin and pathetic 2.20-second 60-foot times, we decided to beat on it and side-stepped the clutch at 3,500 rpm. It hooked and still only managed a 2.20 60-foot. Hmmm, that's not 500 lb-ft. Running a full pass revealed a bad ignition miss at about 4,800 rpm-it felt like a rev limiter, but there isn't one on the car. A few more tries made it obvious the car wouldn't run past five grand, and a 9.20 at 77 mph in the eighth was all we were going to get. That translates into about a 14.26 at 95 mph in the quarter, which is really weak for a 454 '69 Camaro. We passed it across the scales on the way out; the car weighs 3,680 pounds without a driver.

Not sure where the problem might be and quickly running out of time, we sent the car to Chris Petris at Corvette Clinic in Orlando, Florida, to help sort it out, and he found several problems with the car. The hydraulic throwout bearing was misadjusted, the ignition definitely had a miss, and the timing wasn't anywhere close to optimized. Petris put a few days into fine-tuning everything and reported back that it's an entirely different car now, far more brutal than when we drove it. To see what it was worth, Petris planned to take it to Orlando's Speedworld Dragway to run it again, but then Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf Coast and put those plans in the round file. We couldn't get it to the track for a follow-up before this issue had to go to press, so we're stuck with the lame numbers we got on the first outing. But watch next month for the updated performance numbers, which should be dramatically better. We're still thinking a hit of spray would be the right thing to do to this combination, and since the car is eventually going to end up in the hands of the HOT ROD staff for an extended period of time, you can count on us to make the most of it.

For now, it's time to exhale. Barber and his crew can finally catch up on their sleep-at least for a few months. Because you know, they're building all-new fastback Mustang bodies now, and beer-addled conversations have already occurred about building one from scratch. It looks like that'll happen, and when it does you'll read about the very first one in HOT ROD.

NEWS FLASH!

Minutes before we went to press, we sorted some issues and got HOT ROD1back to the track. Chris Petris at Corvette Clinic fixed the ignitionproblems (he installed an MSD Ready-To-Run distributor with a GM module,new plug wires, and Autolite 63 plugs), solved a brake drag issue,cleaned gunk out of the injectors, and installed a new clutch. MichaelJohnson of 5.0 Mustang & Super Fords magazine did the driving atBradenton Motorsports Park just south of Primedia's Florida offices.After some tail chasing, Johnson ran five back-to-back passes in95-degree-F air on the same street tires we ran it with, and the lastone was the best. It ran 12.69 at 109.64 mph in the quarter, witheighth-mile numbers of 8.21 and 87 mph (picked up a second and 10 mph),and a 60-foot of 1.933.